I played a crazy game of MLB The Show 23 last night. I am about a month and a half into a Franchise season with the Rays. My offense has not been great. I am only scoring about 2-3 runs per game. My pitching has been great so it has kept me in contention.
Last night, I took a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the seventh against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Both my runs were courtesy of Brandon Lowe solo homers. Lowe has struggled with a sub .200 average. But he was hitting them last night. I blew the lead with the Yankees scoring a run in both the 7th and 8th inning to tie.
In the ninth, I got an unexpected homer from Harold Ramirez, who leads my team in hits and RBIs but had only a couple of homers. So I took the one run lead to the ninth and my closer, Peter Fairbanks blew his 3 straight saves (after going 9-9 before that in saves).
But then I homered in the top of the eleventh with the lead off batter of Francisco Mejia (who has come through with some key hits and homers this year) and took a two run lead (extra innings start with a man on second) only to blow it again in the bottom of the 10th. An error by Lowe led to one of those runs.
In the eleventh, Randy Arozarena homered to lead off of the inning and then Brandon Lowe came through with his third home run of the night to give me a bit more breathing space. The Yankees managed to put one across but I was able to shut them down and claim the 8-6 victory.
An explosion of offense in the last three innings and six homers allowed me to split the series with the Yankees and gave me some hope that my offense might start to come alive.
Brandon Lowe is one of my favorite Rays both in-real-life and in this game. I enjoyed playing with him and the team in MLB The Show 20 and won the World Series.